


circle around you

by coffeecrowns



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Fic, Magical Gaslighting, a little bit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-10-11 02:12:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17437937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeecrowns/pseuds/coffeecrowns
Summary: In which Shadow Weaver has erased Adora's memories before. Often. With varying degrees of success.





	1. glimmer

**Author's Note:**

> idk I saw a tumblr post about shadow weaver potentially being even worse than we thought and i lost my damn gourd. I had this idea three hours ago and now it exists
> 
> thanks as always, to shannon

When she’s six and Bow is still five, they go out in the woods. Technically they’re suppose to stay with the royal babysitter, but they’ve already gone through five of them: Glimmer pops aways and Bow throws a stone to make a noise up and away as a distraction, and then they can play by themselves. 

Glimmer is very pleased, because she’s getting better with magic. And she had magic! The only thing that would be better is if she and Bow had another friend. Fortunately, it’s an extra good day, because they manage to do just that. They meet a blonde girl their age, who’s looking for her friend, who’s a cat. Glimmer is so excited but the blonde girl, who won’t tell her name, says her cat friend is shy. That makes sense, Bow is shy sometimes, especially when he first started living in Brightmoon. He used to get really upset and hide away, but Glimmer learnt to give him snacks without getting too close. She knows what to do. And the blonde girl doesn’t have a lunch and Bow and Glimmer have the best lunch with sandwiches and apple slices and caramel sauce and their new friend likes all of it. 

They play tag for a while, and then they play hide and seek because it’s more fun with three people, and then they can’t find the blonde girl. 

They make it home, distraught, and Queen Angela is scared and mad and melts when they tell her about the blonde girl in the forest. Glimmer’s mother reassures them both that they made an imaginary friend. Years later, looking bad, Glimmer realizes it was to ease the fact her mom thought that little girl was going to turn up dead. 

If it was anyone else, she would have been, and it would have been a little memory that got locked away, for Bow and her to think about as they got older, always with more questions than answers about one day in the forest. 

 

Only, eight months later, the blonde girl is back. Bow’s had his birthday, and so he’s the same age as Glimmer, their both six. The blonde girl says she’s seven, and that she isn’t imaginary, and that she doesn’t know who they are. She has a big scratch on her arm, and bruises on her knees, like Glimmer and Bow do, but hers run all up and down her legs. 

“What’s your name then, if you  _ are  _ real, you have to have a name,” says Glimmer. The blonde girl starts out with an “A-” then clamps her mouth down. 

“Okay, A,” says Bow, giving her a gentle smile. “I have a snack you might like,” and Glimmer is reminded how grateful she is that Bow asked for caramel sauce for the apples, even though it means they don’t get dessert after dinner. That’s worth A’s little smile. She runs off when she thinks she’s left her cat friend too long, but not before Glimmer and Bow make her pinky promise to come back when she can. They like to play with her. They’ve had each other since Bow came to live with her and her mom, because his parents weren’t nice like her mom is, but they’ve never had a second friend. 

Everything about the second day makes it really difficult for her mom to tell them that A is imaginary. 

 

The third time they see her, it’s four months later, Glimmer is seven now, and when they manage to ask A later, she doesn’t know how old she is. Unfortunately, Glimmer starts with, “Hey A, I missed you!”

A looks horrified and scared, and just about books it. So Bow leads the introductions this time, because he likes playing pretend more than she does. He’s good at it, pretending to make friends with A for the first time not the third. She’s got a chunk of hair missing, and it gives Bow a look in his eyes that means he’s thinking about the bad place he used to live, and Glimmer needs to cheer them both up, right now, so she braids A’s hair in a dutch braid to make a crown to hide the missing chunk. A looks in the water, and smiles and steals glances in the stream the whole way as Glimmer and Bow lead her to the castle. 

A gets a pretty dress from Angela and all the food she can eat at dinner, and doesn’t touch it, looking distressed. 

Glimmer gives her mom a look and asks if she bought any yellow apples, which is their code that something is wrong, because Glimmer doesn’t like yellow apples. 

Her mom looks at A and asks if something is wrong. To her shock, A starts tearing up, saying she has to share with her friend, or they won’t get enough to eat. 

Bow looks at Glimmer and Glimmer looks at Bow and Angela looks at A and A looks at her plate, and very gently, Glimmer puts her hand on A’s and Bow puts his on top on hers, and A keeps crying quietly until Angela comes back with a bag full of food. 

“It’s the same thing and amount on your plate, A, for your friend.” 

A looks Angela in the eyes for just a moment, and Glimmer knows that no matter if she never sees her again, never learns her name, she will always have a sister. 

(It’s ten years before Angela gets to look in those eyes again.)

 

They see A not quite regularly. Sometimes it’s as often as every three months, but over time it gets less and less. A never remembers them, but she won’t come back to the castle, and when they ask, she shakes, and later, her eyes just go glassy, and then Bow’s will also go glassy and Glimmer decides it’s best not to ask. 

When they act like they know her, she stops crying and starts running, and later, starts trying to attack. She gets more and more angry whenever magic comes up. So they stop with the magic. They always try to have some food and a deck of cards on hand when her and Bow go out in the woods, and A likes card games, and Bow likes to teach the same ones over and over again, so that’s what they play. She gives them a handful of names over the years, but always with an A, and that feels like the most honest thing to call her. 

Over the years, she shows up more injured, more volatile, and it only gets more dangerous with the Horde out there. 

When Bow is 12 and she is 13 and they figure A is 14, not that she’s known how old she is in a while, there’s an attack on Brightmoon, and they aren’t allowed out anymore. They spend over a year inside, and by the time they’re allowed back out, they don’t see A again. 

 

Until one day they do. She’s older, wearing a Horde uniform, which explains why she’s been safe in the forest all these years, and makes Glimmer hate the Horde on a more personal level that she ever realized she could. She still doesn’t remember them, so Glimmer looks and Bow and Bow looks at Glimmer, and he smiles sadly in a way that means “here we go again.”

They finally learn Adora’s name, and there’s a sureness in her eyes that’s new. 

Glimmer hopes it’s finally enough to make her stay.


	2. bow and catra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, months later, deciding I want to continue a fic? Of course that's how this rolls.

It’s pretty simple, actually, at the end of the day. Adora leaves. “Come with me,” she says. “The Hoarde is evil.”

“Obviously the Horde is evil,” says Catra. She doesn’t say that it doesn’t matter as long as they get powerful enough to leave, powerful enough to not be hurt, to be safe.  

So Adora leaves, and Catra watches her go. It’s the only home they’ve ever know.  In another world, that would have been the end of it. But she lies in the bunk she isn’t used to being alone in, and wonders how Adora couldn’t see how evil the Horde is. They’ve been groomed to do this. Adora fought, ran off when she was younger. They came to accept their lives. 

How could she not  _ know?  _

She keeps wondering, thinking and thinking, as she leads troops into battle and fails against some magical princesses and the power of sparkles, of whatever. 

 

She watches Adora transform, and laughs, laughs because of course and  _ Shadow Weaver is going to kill her _ . 

And, something about that thought triggers a memory Catra had put high on a shelf somewhere, hidden away. 

 

When they were kids, definitely before they were ten, the first important birthday in the Horde, Adora came back from the woods. She brought Catra food, good food, still a little warm. Adora insisted she had already eaten, and it was all for Catra. Adora told her a story about a nice lady with wings, and friends she made who gave her apples and caramel, and how nice everyone was outside the base. Like an idiot, Catra believed her. Then Shadow Weaver came, and Adora pushed Catra to hid, and Adora went off for more special training, of course, because she’s Shadow Weaver’s favourite. When she comes back, she has no idea what Catra is talking about with the story about the nice mom with wings. She gets angry and she gets scared, so Catra hides it away as just a story. 

 

But looking at people who look, well, they look nice. And if Catra ignores the part of her brain that says they must be weak, they look like they could be from Adora’s forgotten story. Something about wings and sparkles and nice places. Something about safety, which Catra understands only in relationship to people, not places. 

Okay. Well. If Adora wants to trust them, that’s her prerogative. But Catra is going to keep Adore safe. That’s  _ her  _ prerogative. 

The boy is the clear best target. 

 

It isn’t a super great plan. She catches him, alone in the forest, knocks him out, ties him up, drags him as far as she can, in a small clearing beside a waterfall, so no one can hear him scream. She isn’t stupid. 

He doesn’t scream. 

He looks at her, and he looks scared, obviously, because she hasn’t lost her edge, the Horde is evil and she knows how to survive. But he doesn’t scream. 

“How long have you known Adora? How long have you been manipulating her?” Catra demands. 

“We aren’t manipulating her!” shouts the boy. Then he processes the other half of her demands. “But we’ve known her since she was maybe five or six? Uh, she didn’t know how old she was when we were kids.” 

That tracks. But there’s more to the story. 

“Okay,” she says. “What did you do to her?”

“It’s more of what did you do to her,” he mutters darkly. “We gave her food. We played games. We tried to make her feel safe.” Catra rolls her eyes. 

“Why? So you could cash it in later?”

“Glimmer wanted a friend. We were five,” the boy explains. 

“What did you want?” Catra asks, eyes narrowing. 

“I looked at her and I saw myself. My biological parents were, unkind, and couldn’t take care of me. Glimmer and her mom took me in.” 

“You could have taken care of yourself,” Catra offers. 

“That’s real messed up, you know?” She nods, because sure, whatever. She shrugs. He takes a deep breath. “Yeah. I could have. But you’re supposed to have people who love and care about you. And when you’re a kid, that means people take care of you.” Catra looks at him carefully. 

“Did you take care of Adora?” Catra asks. 

“We tried,” says the boy, taking a deep breath. “We took her home once, she had dinner with us, we gave her food to bring back to you. But it was had. She never remembered us.”

That stops Catra in her tracks. 

“She didn’t remember you?”

“No.”

And suddenly, it clicks into place. She wants to cry. She doesn’t collapse, because she won’t show that kind of weakness. She pushes her hair back, rolls her eyes to keep the tears back. Then his voice cuts through the heavy silence. 

“Hey, I think we got off to a bad start. My name is Bow,” says, well, Bow, apparently. 

“My name is Catra,” she says. 

“It’s nice to meet you. I’d shake your hand if I weren’t tied up,” he says, smiling. It’s big and bright, like he means it. God, these people are going to be insufferable. The things she does for Adora. 

“Okay,” she says. She’s aged five years in the past minute. But she couldn’t protect Adora by herself, no matter how hard she tried. This Bow character and Glimmer, the sparkle princess, apparently tried and still, Adora is right there, in the front line of battle. Maybe, and this is a crazy thought, but it's the best Catra’s got, if they pool resources, together they might keep the only important person she has safe. She unties Bow. 

“I surrender. Can you take me to Adora? I want to see her if she really is safe,” says Catra, trying to keep her voice that says she’s dangerous. Bow rubs his wrist and gives her a sad smile, meaning she failed, which is infuriating, but maybe being underestimated will give her an advantage later on. 

She can always take Adora and start over. It’ll be easier to escape some princesses than Shadow Weaver. She’s sure of a handful of things, and the fact she can survive anything ranks high on the list. 

“Time to go home,” says Bow, still with that dumb smile on his face. If he really has lived through what he claims, he has no right to it. Catra silently wonders where he found it. If he’s going to teach Adora. 

Catra takes a deep breath and follows him wherever home is. 

Because Adora is there. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think (and hope) there's only gonna be one more chapter of this. We'll see.

**Author's Note:**

> still idk, this is the first thing i've written in a while, (thanks antidepressants!!!) and never for this glorious fandom that genuinely means the world to me.


End file.
